“Space. The Final Frontier. These are the Voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission, to seek out new lifeforms, new civilizations. To boldly go where no man – noone – has gone before”

Star Trek is back with the twelthth movie in the franchise, Star Trek Into Darkness. J.J. Abrahms once again directed the movie, and is moving on in the alterred Star Trek- Universe.

Story:

After losing the command over the starship Enterprise because of disregarding the Prime Directive, James T. Kirk witnesses a terrible assault on starfleet HQ by ex-special agent John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch). Seeking Vengeance, Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller) gives Kirk back his ship, and the young captain goes on a journey into the lions cave: The Klingon territory. There he wants to finish Harrison once and for all, with starfleet’s latest special torpedos. But not everyone in his crew is happy about the mission’s objectives, and Kirk eventually has to face the tough question whether he can protect his crew or not.

or his ship?

Review: – “Shall we begin?“

“Star trek Into Darkess” may have a very confusing title at first glance, but actually, it’s quite fitting. It’s about the direction everyone and everything can go in life, the decissions we face each day. One path leads into the light, the other into darkness.

J.J. Abrahms’ second Star Trek movie is full of action, drama and comedy. The visuals are terrific, especially Earth. We spend a lot of time there, which may not sound that special, but actually is, because Star Trek movies and shows aren’t often set there (except for timetravel stories), and when they are, then it’s mostly a studio backlot. In this movie, we see a little more of the planet, and what other cities look like. London is both, a modern city with a lot of technology, as well as it keeps older buildings or technologies (take the elevator interior at the beginning of the film for example).

The new warp core and the Enterprise going to warp also look really cool and refreshing. The actors are great like last time, and each important crewmember gets his personal scenes to shine. Even when a character looks and acts one dimensional, the other characters acknowledge that, making a statement and a punchline at the same time. Cumberbatch is a brilliant villain, maybe one of the best in the franchise. I always got goosebumbs the way he delivers his lines. His Harrison is an icecold killer and master planner.

Although there are some controversities regarding him being a criminal mastermind, who lets himself capture on purpose (like: SPOILERS: The Joker, Silva, that dead chick from Torchwood), but when you think about the Vulcan way (it means: logically), one would realise that that’s not the case here. My friend flipthetruck has explained it more detailly.

The movie takes a lot of material and themes from other Star Trek movies, especially Star Trek II – The Wrath of Khan. Some people would also say that it is basically the same movie (to be fair, Star Trek Nemesis was rather a remake of that movie too), but I would rather claim it is a dark mirror version of the 1982 film. Similar things happen to the crew, but the interesting part for the audience is to see how the characters react and deal with those situations this time. The characters grow with each decission they have to make, and the end could only be “the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Of course the movie has its flaws and problems, with the biggest one probably being the rushed ending, which sadly shows only little evolution of story and characters. But despite this flaw, the rest of the movie makes up for it by being pretty awesome. Ok, there’s also a half naked woman (Alice Eve) in one scene, which was only put there to give thirteen year -olds a reason to (re)watch the movie, and that also caused a lot of controversial publicity, because it serves no real purpose.

Verdict

Star Trek Into Darkness is a polarizing movie, but I highly recommend it. Despite its flaws, I think it is one of the best Star Trek movies, in the same area as Star Trek 2, 6, 8 and 11.